In the podcasts, Janes explores the origin and often evolving meaning of historical documents both famous and less known. UW Today presents these periodically, and all of the podcasts are available online at the Information School website.

About 9 feet long, weighing about 1,700 pounds, the 2,200-year-old black granite Rosetta Stone bears ancient inscriptions written in four languages that later led to solving the riddle of Egyptian hieroglyphics. Its message is a decree passed by a council of priests establishing the divinity of new Egyptian King Ptolemy V a year after his coronation.

Documents that Changed the World

If you want a message to last, Janes says in his podcast, stone really does the job. “A message for the ages deserves a medium for the ages, though sometimes the medium can outlast the message.”

Then came the challenge of what to write. “The Rosetta Stone has been so studied, so discussed, so marketed, I knew I needed to find a new angle about information and documents,” Janes said. “So I focused on the journey it has taken, from plain rock to venerated symbol of ingenuity, and all the steps in between — and to come.”

He notes along the way that the stone has survived all the years “more by accident than design,” to end up with its original intent superseded by its role as a key to unlocking “long-forgotten Egyptian writing, language and culture.” Still, he says in the podcast, “It’s one of the great document stories of all time.”

The Documents that Changed the World podcasts also are available on iTunes, with about 50,000 downloads there so far.